Broadband costs around the world

As broadband delivery is a key to successful digital publications, it is interesting to note that broadband users in 30 of the world's most developed countries are getting greatly differing speeds and prices, according to a new report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)

The report, which says 60 per cent of its member countries net users are now on broadband, points out that countries that have switched to fibre networks have the best speeds at the lowest prices.

In Japan net users have 100Mbps lines, ten times higher than the OECD average: Japan's price for broadband per megabit per second is the lowest in the OECD at US$0.22 equivalent.

In the United States, the cheapest megabit per second broadband connection is US$3.18 while in the UK it is US$3.62 equivalent

The most expensive is Turkey at US$81.13 equivalent.

Subscribers to Japan's fibre networks can also upload at the same speed they can download, which is not possible with ADSL (broadband over a telephone line) and most cable subscriptions.

According to the report, broadband prices for DSL connections across the 30 countries had fallen by 19 per cent and increased in speed by 29 per cent in the year to October 2006.

Cable prices and speeds followed a similar trend.

The least expensive monthly subscription for always-on broadband was in Sweden, where US $10.79 equivalent bought a 256kbps connection. The country with the most expensive entry point for broadband access was Mexico, where it cost US$52.36 equivalent for 1mbps.

Many countries have seen a jump in broadband speeds over the last few years as many ISPs utilising existing telephone lines push ADSL2+.

ADSL2+ is a technology which doubles the frequency band of a typical ADSL connection over a phone line, in effect doubling the amount of data which can be sent downstream to a user.

The theoretical maximum speed of an ADSL2+ line is 24Mbps, still much slower than speeds over fibre optic networks. France was the first country in the western world to use the technology, about two or three years ago.